Feminist excelled at friendships

Thursday

Apr 25, 2013 at 6:00 AM

Dianne Williamson

Angela G. Dorenkamp lived a vibrant life of the mind — teaching, writing, reading and debating anyone brave enough to take her on. So it could have been the cruelest of fates when a massive stroke erased those abilities, just five years after retiring from Assumption College.

Remarkably, it wasn’t. For over a decade, this brilliant scholar held a silent salon of sorts in her room at the Jewish Healthcare Center, hosting friends who showed up to talk politics, gossip, read to her and nourish an intellectual fever undimmed by illness.

“She was passionate about everything, even while she was unable to speak,” said friend Annette Rafferty of Abby’s House. “She couldn’t verbalize but she could communicate in other ways. I never left feeling sorry for her.”

On Saturday, Dorenkamp died at 83. With her passing, the feminist who was ahead of her time left a large circle of devotees who marveled at her ability to find purpose and joy from silence and a wheelchair.

This is not her biography, but it should be noted that her father was an Italian immigrant who never finished fourth grade. Yet his daughter earned a B.A., summa cum laude, from Webster College in Missouri, a master’s from St. Louis University and, at age 44 and the mother of four, a Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut.

She moved from St. Louis to Worcester in the early 1960s with her then-husband, John H. Dorenkamp, and immersed herself in the civil rights and feminist movements. She was a popular professor of English at Assumption, where she established a minor in women’s studies. She was a founder of the Worcester Women’s History Project and instrumental in the push to place portraits of women among the men at Mechanics Hall.

Tough-minded but warm, Dorenkamp was friends with Abbie Hoffman and raised her children to embrace ideas. It took them years to realize that other children weren’t expected to discuss politics during dinner; when she was 10, daughter Erica recalls her mother abruptly handing her the phone during a spirited debate.

“Tell him the bombing of Cambodia is wrong,” Dorenkamp instructed her daughter, who dutifully followed instructions.

“I didn’t think anything of it,” Erica said with a laugh. “She was always passionate and challenging us. She was big, loud, and friendly. She loved books, movies, politics, and causes, and she could talk about it all until the cows came home.”

But while she instilled a love of books in her children, she also fought for the right of daughter Monica to play baseball with the boys at Midland Street School in the 1970s.

“She was always smarter than anyone I knew,” Monica said. “She loved the life of the mind, and that’s the life she gave us. We idolized her. We were a little bit in awe and a little scared, but in a good way.”

A woman of large appetites, she was overweight most of her life but loved shopping for clothes, favoring bold colors and costume jewelry. Intellectually and physically, Dorenkamp stood out.

The stroke in 2000 left her partially paralyzed and unable to walk, talk or read. Yet the scholar who so cherished a lively chat found ways to communicate, with a smile, raised eyebrow, laugh, clenched fist or blown kiss.

“She was a genius at friendship,” said Barbara Kohin, 80. “Imagine someone being unable to talk for 13 years and still have a group of regular visitors. And imagine an English professor who couldn’t read or talk. It was heartbreaking but you didn’t feel sad, because she had an enthusiastic response to everything and was always upbeat.”

A memorial Mass will be May 18 in the chapel at Assumption. The college expects a large turnout, for a woman who was always larger than life.